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PATRICIA KELLY: . . . [remarks joined in progress] Patricia Kelly and this morning I have the pleasure of interviewing Dolores Haugh for the Mt. Prospect oral history project. Today is Tuesday, August 13, 1991, and it is approximately 10:35 in the morning. Thank you for joining us this morning, Dolores. I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to talk with you about early Mt. Prospect. Can you tell us your full name including your maiden name, where you were born and the year?
DOLORES HAUGH: Okay. My name is Dolores Norma George Haugh. I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and that was back in 1923.
KELLY: Who were your parents or your grandparents, Dolores?
HAUGH: My mother was Norma Lucille Leonard George, and then the later married and so her last name when she passed away was Bemberg. An my father's name was Sanford Orvil George. What else did you want to know?
KELLY: Did they live in the area?
HAUGH: Yes. They lived in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago in Logan Square.
KELLY: Oh, okay. When did you move to Mt. Prospect?
HAUGH: We moved here--well, basically we bought property out here in 1948, bu we didn't build our house until after Cheryl was born, so that would be about 1952 that we came out here. We had lost a little girl and so we wanted something to keep our minds busy, so we decided to build a house. So that's how we came out here.
KELLY: You were living in Chicago?
HAUGH: Right. I was living in the same house that my grandfather built back in the late 1800s.
KELLY: Oh, how exciting! So you've lived here since the early '50s?
HAUGH: Early '50s. I can always the remember the population. My dad had passed away so Mama was living with us, and so she said, "You know, the population is 4,004 now." So that's how I always remember what the population was. Otherwise I never would have remembered it.
KELLY: Okay. What was the address of your home?
HAUGH: Seven South Edward.
KELLY: Seven South Edward. You had not lived in any other address prior to that?
HAUGH: No, not out here.
KELLY: When you first came to Mt. Prospect, what was considered the downtown? What did it look like?
HAUGH: Well, it's basically the same area. I think one of the reasons I wanted just to say this because it's very important. The main reason we chose Mt. Prospect was it had good building codes. We went all over and found that there were a lot of places that were built that had a beautiful home and right next door there would be a little teensie-weensie house, you know. So there were a lot of building codes out here, and we chose a street that was partially populated because we wanted to make sure that it was an established neighborhood. We wanted to make sure that we were close to schools and good shopping and so on. It was very important that we chose where we did. It was also one of the highest portions in Mt. Prospect--not flooding. That was one of the reasons. The downtown area was very simple. Keefer's Drugstore was right on Northwest Highway. He had a soda fountain in it. The Kruse's Tavern was where it is now, although it's called Mrs. P and Me. But my husband was in the Army Reserve, and he would have to go to meetings on Wednesday evenings. So when the children were little, we used to go over to Kruse's because there was a family restaurant in the back in the tavern. We'd go in the back way, and we'd sit and have our delicious hamburgers or fried chicken. They were really know for that. Busse Bierman, of course was here, and Frank was such a wonderful helper to us because neither Bob nor I, of course, had ever built a house before. If you think Mr. Blandings had problems, believe me, we did too. But Frank was so helpful because he would--sometimes Bob would say, "Gee, I'm having trouble with this or that," and he'd say, "Oh, I'll come on over and I'll give you a hand getting this installed," and so on. And so that was always made a soft spot in my heart for Frank, and, of course, we were friends for years. We'll miss him now. The doctor that we went to. I don't see his name on here and I'm trying to think of what it was. Woolfarth was his name. He used to have his office where the Chiropractic Center is now on Prospect Avenue. Basically he was the only "hospital" because the closest hospital was Elgin or in the city. There was no hospital out here. In fact, we helped contribute to the Northwest Community Hospital when it was built because we felt there was a need for it. I'll tell you a funny incident. My husband was finishing up the last bit of the painting of the eaves on the house. It was a brick house but the eaves needed to be finished, and we hadn't had the blacktop put in on the driveway, so it was kind of uneven. Daddy got up on a stool instead of getting out the big ladder and fell into the window well, which is hysterically funny, and of course, I stood and laughed as he was sitting there with bucket of dark brown paint over his head. He did not find it as humorous as I did. It took me three boxes of Tide to get it out of his hair and his eyes, and he'd kill me if he knew that I was leaving this to posterity [laughter]. But anyway, the reason I mentioned it was that we had to take him into Dr. Woolfarth for an examination and he had hurt his back, so it wasn't really as funny as it did look. That was one of the things. Of course, the Mt. Prospect Oil Company was there. I mentioned Keefer's Pharmacy, and, of course, Van Driel's was there, too. Next door to him was a little butcher shop that was run by, I think it was Ed Busse. Edwin Busse had that. And, of course, there was Meeske's. Then on that block was the Gift Box, which was a nice store for cards and things like that. There was also a little tiny paint store and, of course, Schmit's Bakery. Let's see. I'm just trying to think. Now, acrosse the street was the National. That was newly built, if I remember right, across the tracks on Prospect Avenue. The A & P didn't open until--let's see, Sandy was about a year or two old--so that was about '56 when it opened at 83 and Central because we went to the grand opening with our babies, per se, in buggies. I didn't drive. The first few years I was out here I didn't drive. That was the great thing because we could walk downtown. There was another store. McMann's Dry Good Store was where the Sound Post is now. They carried a pretty nice line of children's clothing, which was needful because otherwise you'd have to go into the city because neither of the shopping centers, of course, were built at that time. The church that we went to we moved in on a Saturday and on Sunday morning we went to St. Mark Lutheran Church, which was a little cement building, and it was a very small little tiny church. There was no big edifice as it is now. There was no educational center that they have now. There was no big gymnasium center that they have now. It was just a little cement-brick building. We got involved at the church right away and I became after we adopted Sandy, I became Sunday school superintendent there. We used to have our Sunday school down in the furnace room because there wasn't any room. We were very involved in St. Mark, especially with the building of the sanctuary. Then later I was asked to serve on the committee to design the educational center. Then we felt that we had had so much experience in building that when the opportunity came to start a new church, which was Grace Lutheran out at Wolf and Euclid, why, we were on the steering committee for that, and I was Sunday school superintendent there for many years. And actually, that is where I began my writing career because I started to write for the church and some of the things were published.
My first publication was with Cook Publishing in Elgin. It was a little play that I had written. And, of course, it spurred me on to greater things. Also, all of us were pretty much the same age on our block, and we had very little money. We were young and we all had young babies and so we looked for things that we would like to do, and Pastor Steve [Stephens] was with the South church and he started the Marcos [YMARCOS?], which at that time was Young Married Couples, but now it's Your Married Couples because all the young married couples have grown up. We were invited by our neighbors, Bill and Mary Keith to come and we went to that and we had a wonderful time. I'm still, believe it or not, they've invited me to come back into the couples group after all these years. Of course, many of them I've known for a long time.
KELLY: You talked a little bit, when you were talking about looking for a place to build, about the reason that you came here was because of the building codes. What were some of the things in those building codes that really drew you to Mt. Prospect?
HAUGH: Well for one thing, the neighborhoods were very well established with like buildings. Now, I don't mean that they were exactly alike because they didn't start building those look-alike buildings until the Bluetts went in, which was over there behind Gregory School, and that was much later. But what we liked is the fact that the houses were all well taken care of, and when we built we had to get permits for different things. For instance, we didn't have our garage contracted. We had that separately done, and so that contractor had to get a building permit from the village and so on. So it was very important to have that because it kept the buildings on a higher level in likeness. In other words, you didn't have just a little shack and then a nice building, and that was important. Then the other thing that sold us were the trees because the trees were just all archways, every single street. Busse School was in walking distance. And then within a few years after we moved here, the Mt. Prospect Plaza started, and so we were only four blocks from that. And then Bob could walk to the railroad stations. So those were all really important things for us to consider in locating here.
KELLY: In coming from the city, did you find that you were able to purchase most of the items that you needed from day-by-day living here in the downtown area? You've talked about the hardware store and the grocery stores and those kinds of things.
HAUGH: We did mostly although we'd go shopping Mary Keith, my neighbor drove and so we'd go into Des Plaines once a week. There was a butcher shop in Des Plaines that we liked and we went in there. It was little less expensive than Meeske's, you know, for our pocketbooks. See we didn't have anything but the National out here, so we got some of our meat there. Oh, yes! You know what else we had was a dime store! We had a Ben Franklin dime store on Prospect Avenue. Later it was across the street or vice versa. I can't remember. Mrs. Smith is still around. She was the owner. She and her husband owned it. I remember it moved, but I can't remember if it moved from Prospect to Main or from Main to Prospect. But I do know that we had a nice Ben Franklin store. The kids just loved it.
KELLY: Where did you go to buy your big ticket things like cars or buggies or those kinds of things?
HAUGH: Well, actually we didn't have any money for a car for a long time. Most of our cars were second hand to begin with, and I don't think we got our first new car until way later. I mean, like in the '70s. That sounds funny, but that was really true. We had fallen heir to a couple of cars from our families. That's what brought us out here. Then we bought a second-hand Chevy, and we bought a second-hand Mercury, you know. So, I mean, we really weren't involved in that kind of thing. As far as furniture is concerned, I was abundantly blessed because since my dad had passed away, I had a lot of my mother's things and basically I went into Chicago at that time for my big things like drapery material and rods and things like that because that wasn't out here. Now Wille's Lumber was there, but Wille's Lumber was really a lumber yard. It wasn't a gift shop like it later was. They just did the lumber kind of things. We got most of our things there except I can't remember where we got the carpeting from Chicago, and I think we had the linoleum from Chicago, too.
KELLY: So for transportation you basically relied upon the train then and your pedal extremities, so to speak?
HAUGH: Right, right until I learned to drive, and then after that harrowing experience of my husband teaching me. . . . Well, the other things was, too, Mama drove and Mama lived with us and she had a car. So we weren't totally isolated and, you know, have to walk everywhere, but it was good to walk. It was great!
KELLY: So your groceries then you went to Meeske's or the National and into Des Plaines?
HAUGH: Yes.
KELLY: How did the stores that were in Mt. Prospect at the time, how did you learn what they had and what their hours were? How did they advertise?
HAUGH: Well, I'll tell you, they had a little shopper that they used to throw up onto the front. I can't remember that we ever subscribed to any papers at that time. We were all too busy trying to get our houses finished and raising our children and going to PTA meetings and things like that. I can remember one thing that I thought was so terrific, and it was a little later on. It must have been maybe in the late '50s or early '60s even. They had a shopper that Paddock put out. It was always distributed on election day, and the stores would post numbers on the front of their doors and in the paper that you got were like numbers. You had to go downtown and you had to go up and down all the streets to see if any of the numbers matched and then you got a prize. But it did bring the people into the downtown area . I want to talk a little about that because it's very important to me because I've worked hard on the downtown area over the years in many capacities. We had a group of people who came in who were very, very interested in developing the downtown because here's what happened: This nice little cluster of little small-town shops that I talked about were wonderful except what happened was when the big centers came like the Plaza and then later Randhurst, of course, the novelty of it drew all the people away from the downtown. It really did, with the exception of a few people who had like charges at the different places like the drugstore and Meeske's and things like that. But basically it completely changed the downtown. What happened was the non-retail people came in. By that I mean, real estate offices, the lawyer offices and so on. And slowly but surely it became a non-retail area, which was very detrimental, because it's hard to survive economically for the people that are there. So, in 1974, I believe it was, the village started a comprehensive plan. Now, I can't remember if it was the beginning or whether it was the revision of it, but at least they were beginning to look again to the downtown. I served on the committee. And then, later on I served also when I was with the village and then afterwards when I was with the Chamber of Commerce with Ken Fritz and we went down to see Naperville and toured Naperville to copy, if you will, their program of rehab of the downtown. I have to say Ken Fritz has worked terrifically hard on this, and it was not a easy job. It took four years before we actually got the first street in, and it was Busse Avenue from Central to Wille Street. Is that Wille Street that Wille Lumber is on? It think it is. Or is it Pine? Anyway, that first block. I know I worked with Ken, and he had a beautiful display made and I helped him to get the display in the bank and different places so people would become aware of what we were trying to do. We had a lot of opposition to it. Many, many of the people on that street were adverse to it because they felt they were losing parking spaces. However, in the long run they didn't really do that because there was additional parking on some of the side streets. That was when Wille became a one-way street, which it is now, and then there was a whole new thing. Also on beautification, I wanted to mention that was important to me, too. As the downtown became non-retail, it became kind of run-down and nobody seemed to care too much about what it looked like. When I went into the Chamber of Commerce, one of the first things that I did was initiate a beautification program. Through that, working with the elected officers and with the people from Public Works, we were able to get a man to come out from the arboretum and design our entranceways. That was really our very first step. The second step was to sell planter boxes to all the merchants, which basically, I was told, couldn't be done. However, I called a meeting of the downtown merchants. I want to mention that too, that Jack Keefer worked very hard and so did Gary Pospisil in trying to maintain some form of a downtown nucleus. They did this with a turkey trot every fall, they did it with sidewalk sales in the summer. I think that those people should really be acknowledged for trying very hard to keep the downtown alive. As I say, the Downtown Merchants Association really started to develop through the chamber's interest because I always felt that the small business was very important to the chamber. That was one of my philosophies. For three full years we tried desperately to bring a Downtown Merchants Association into being. It did work. And I have to tell you when I first met Jerry and first talked about it, he absolutely was against it. He did a 360-degree turnaround when he saw what was happening. What happened was I went to all of the downtown merchants and sold them a planter box for $25. It was a six-foot planter box. Now, let me tell you what happened. Public Works filled them with dirt. I got the Park District to grow the flowers. I got the senior men to plant the flowers, and we got the Boy Scouts to water the flowers. So basically, other than the $25 it did not cost any of the merchants any money. Some of those planter boxes are still out there today being planted. The boys at Prospect High School built the boxes for us. I'm trying to think of the fellow's name Dick . . . Oh, isn't that awful? I can't think of his name. I'll think of it. He was the woodshop teacher, and so he supervised the boys and so on. But it has always been a very interesting development. I think that we could not have had the refurbishing or redeveloping without the elected officials giving the merchants the facade program. I think the facade program was the axis on which it turned because under that they could have their property upgraded especially the fronts all the way up to $5,000 in matching funds. That was a real plus and that, of course, what you see today, is the results of that.
KELLY: The restoration of some of those older buildings that were existing buildings and stores. The drugstore, I'm sure, the hardware store, which were original stores.
HAUGH: And, of course, we lost some old buildings, and we have over the years. We've lost a lot of old buildings, and sometimes you look at it from a historical angle and you wish you probably could have saved some of them, but on the other hand, they were necessities that had to be fulfilled in the name of progress. One of them was that we lost the old Schimming Oil, which was the very first business in Mt. Prospect. It was a creamery originally, and so, of course, when that went down, that was sad. Also they tore down the original municipal building, which we had converted through the Historical Society as a museum. However, that building was not original in the fact that two feet had been removed when they built the new water tower. But basically, I think the downtown development has certainly upgraded. I think that there's still things that have to be done. I also feel that by getting the merchants involved, I have seen so many of them change over from anti-progress to really being supportive, and I think that's terrific.
KELLY: You talked a little bit about going to Dr. Woolfarth as your physician when you came to Mt. Prospect and the lack of hospitals. Was his practice different than what you would find in a doctor today? Did he dispense medicines?
HAUGH: Yes. In fact, he would give you the medicines. I mean, a lot of times you would get the medicines directly from him, which of course, you don't do anymore. Mostly it goes with your prescriptions and so on. But, yes, he would dispense medications. He made house calls, and he also liked to sail a boat, which I thought was real interesting. He had a big sailboat, and he went around the world, if I'm not mistaken, in it. So he was a very interesting person. I did not know Louise Kester, but she was practicing, I believe, at the same time. However, as I say, we started to go to him because of this accident that Bob had had. Later on when we to Dr. Karnes, who was one of the first pediatricians in town. And Dr. Bagnolo was out here.
KELLY: Did they also make house calls?
HAUGH: Yes, they did on real serious things. There was no place to go. You didn't have a hospital emergency room like you have now. And you didn't call him for everything, either. In the good old days, you know, you'd call a doctor, and he'll [tell] you over the phone what to do. I mean if it's like mumps or measles. I'll never forget when Sandy came down with the mumps. Cheryl had had them so we knew she was going to get them. I had my relatives out for Sunday afternoon dinner and she was running a temperature, and my father-in-law was hysterical that we hadn't called the doctor. And I said, "Dad, she's getting the mumps." He was so insistent, and, of course, it cost a lot to have them come out in those days. It was $20 a call, and that was a lot of money for us. So my husband said to my father-in-law, "You want him to come so darn bad, you can pay for it." He said, "Okay." He came out and he took one look at her and said, "Mumps." But at least it didn't cost us anything.
KELLY: Did the people that work in the stores and as helpers for the doctor, were they local people or did some of them come from outside the area?
HAUGH: Oh, no, mostly local. It was a very small-town atmosphere, very tight. In fact, it was where town and country meet. That was our motto. Because we were country. It was farms all over. When we built our house on Edward Street and we looked north, it was all farm. Central Road was just a little tiny two-lane very narrow road. I can remember when they widened it. All the dirt we got when it was paved with the four lanes and everything. On the other side of town across the railroad tracks you had hardly any homes at all. It was all farmland.
KELLY: So the building was mostly between the railroad track and what is now Central Road?
HAUGH: Right. It was called the Busse Development, the George Busse Development. He had the homes that went all the way, I believe, from Central all the way to Rand Road. Then it was like a triangle that came down Busse and then over. In the 1920s, when I did my research on it, he was the one that planted all the elm trees and, of course, subdivided and sold the property.
KELLY: Those are the streets that have the boys' names?
HAUGH: Right. Right. It's really funny because Mt. Prospect has one point in it that's supposed to be the highest point in Cook County, which happens to be that little rise on Central Road just as you go up to Edwards Street. So, I always lived on top of a mountain. It's real interesting as far as the development of it goes. As I say, I think the chamber had a lot to do with pulling things together and it still does, of course. There were all kinds of things to remember. We always had the fireworks on the Fourth of July and the parade and we had the Zenith Towers, which my kids called the Winken and Blinken lights. They were over on the corner of Rand and Central.
KELLY: What were those?
HAUGH: That was the tag ends, if you will, of one of the first broadcasting centers in the suburbs. In fact, a gentleman is writing a book on it and I just did the research on it for him and talked to Tripani's son, who was at that time involved with WWMM out of Arlington. We got pictures of the old Zenith Towers, and, of course, they were taken down.
KELLY: You mentioned the creamery as being one of the first businesses in the downtown area. Where were they located and what did they do? Did they actually deliver milk and cream to homes?
HAUGH: Oh, yes. They processed the milk there. The farmers from all around would bring their raw milk in, and if they didn't send it in in the milk cans, which they did at first they just sent it in in the milk cans. But a lot of it was processed there and the cream separated. Of course, that was before my time. Most of what I know about it is just through research from the Historical Society. But it was one of the very first creameries out here, and they did cheese. There was another factory that made cheese. And we had Wille's Lumber and Coal. But that was all before we came. When we came, of course, it was still Schimming Oil at that time, I believe.
KELLY: The creamery was Schimming Oil?
HAUGH: Yes, when we came out. Then I remember, too, under the water tower was the old municipal building, and that used mainly for storage and the shooting range for the police department was in there. There was a man in there who repaired the parking meters, which we used to have downtown. We had parking meters downtown. I think the biggest thing that hurt the downtown also was the widening of 83 because it eliminated front-store parking. And, of course, parking has always been the major problem of our downtown. I've always suggested we build a second layer over the whole thing and let people drop in from the top because there's no way you're going to get enough people, cars and everything in those streets.

Materials in this collection are made available by the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. All rights reserved. To request reproductions or inquire about permissions, contact: reference@mppl.org. Please cite the item title and collection name.

Materials in this collection are made available by the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. All rights reserved. To request reproductions or inquire about permissions, contact: reference@mppl.org. Please cite the item title and collection name.

Materials in this collection are made available by the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. All rights reserved. To request reproductions or inquire about permissions, contact: reference@mppl.org. Please cite the item title and collection name.

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Materials in this collection are made available by the Mount Prospect Historical Society and the Mount Prospect Public Library. All rights reserved. To request reproductions or inquire about permissions, contact: reference@mppl.org. Please cite the item title and collection name.